Albertina Sisulu, a leader of the UDF, briefs a group of women before they embark on a national women's day picket in Johannesburg.  The 1980s was a period in which the highest level of strikes in South African history was recorded. The most intense and sustained struggle between the mass democratic movement and the apartheid state occurred between 1984 and 1986. Workers, students, youth, women, the unemployed and villagers in remote rural areas rose up in unprecedented numbers to end their oppression. It was this mass uprising that eventually made the apartheid system unworkable and forced the authorities to seek a negotiated settlement with the liberation movements.

Image source

Paul Weinberg, South Photographs